DON'T GO IN THE HOT TUB
11.07.2014 - 12.13.2014
An exhibition of works by Brianna Rigg, Allison Wiese, and Joe Yorty
The disease of imagination is desire. The folds of the carpet still have a stench. The author described the impossible and the artist decided to live it. Standing in the corner has never felt so good. You can pick your nose and you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose. Or maybe you did. You were dreaming of Q-tips and modernism. Earwigs eating up flowers. Reality forgot about you but you’re still here; I know you because I see that you did it.
Don’t Go In the Hot Tub is a group show by Brianna Rigg, Allison Wiese and Joe Yorty; three artists who share in common the impulse to traverse cultural landscapes by investigating Americana through strategies of re-contextualization. Composed primarily of sculpture, or of two-dimensional artworks that flatten the object, Don’t Go In the Hot Tub explores how the patina of domesticity, travel, leisure, and labor, rubs up against the physical reality of the body.
Brianna Rigg treats material exchange as a vital form of experience. By examining, disrupting, diverting, manipulating, and re-distributing the artifact, Rigg is reaching for a sense of place; for connections with unmet strangers; and for a glimpse of history as interpreted through the myths of today. The object, to Rigg, is not merely a signifier, but a vessel of energy. Rigg’s effort is to orchestrate relationships between objects to enliven their energy making it felt in the viewer.
Allison Wiese’s sculpture creates poetry out of common things, repurposing or repositioning common materials to make new meaning. Her past work has employed firewood, fruit, highway signage and a whistled theme-song, but also uses shards of common language – literal texts like slogans, maxims or exhortations and symbolic language such as flags or football “fight” songs. Fascinated by the way in which we look at our surroundings through invisible cultural and political lenses Wiese attempts to subvert inert or oppressive objects, languages and signs by remixing them.
Joe Yorty is largely drawn to all things related to the American domestic interior (and the front and back yard too). Through the use of both found and artist-made objects, Yorty’s sculptures, collages, and photography bring to attention the pathos of the well-weathered throw pillow while holding in high esteem the persistence of the rusting barbeque grill. It is no coincidence that he sources much of the material for his work from home improvement stores. In fact, he has made a conscious choice to explore the possibilities of critique through an active engagement with interior design theory and making work that quite literally functions to decorate the home.
Photographs by Joe Yorty and Brianna Rigg